OK, a few things about Cradle of Filth, to end my picking week. I had long ignored them, assuming from the name that they were goregrind or some other grimy niche that I'm not really into. I gave Thornography a chance, for reasons I have forgotten, and really liked it, and that sent me belatedly scouring through the back catalog. I like most of it, including some of the dubious-sounding EPs and compilations. Godspeed on the Devil's Thunder is probably the first whole record of theirs I've been actively disappointed with. (But I saw them on tour for it, and they were still fabulous.)

Nymphetamine may or may not be my favorite, but it's the one that seems most intriguing on its own, to me, precisely for its tension between flagrant cryptic ugliness and goofy goth-pop ambition. In a way it finds Cradle of Filth trying to be both Dimmu Borgir and HIM, at once. Easy enough to hate, for many reasons, but for me the artistic risk involved is admirable for its own sake, and obviously it doesn't hurt that I like the effect, personally. I'm a devoted metal fan, but I'm also an unapologetic pop fan, and a fan of a lot of other things, and I have no purist agenda for any of them. Cross them all! Cradle of Filth is plainly wearing "evil" as a costume, but I guess it basically always seems like a costume to me. I don't inherently take Emperor or Gorgoroth or Bathory any more seriously. Anybody who was "really" evil wouldn't be wasting their time writing songs about it.

If this were a three-song listening club, I might actually have used that bonus-disc cover of "Mr. Crowley". I like their own material better, but hearing them take something familiar and transform it kind of demonstrates their style and agenda even more succinctly. Could have done HIM's cover of "Wicked Game", and one of the many Dream Theater covers in place of Fates Warning. Or maybe Anacrusis doing NMA's "I Love the World"...

is it artistic risk though? Im pretty damn sure it's the sound of a "band" (they have a constantly changing line up dont they?) trying to stay accessible to the kerrang kiddies so they sell loads of records and make money. I dont see dani filth as having any artistic integrity at all.

Integrity usually makes for boring music, IMO. I like the Cradle of Filth. I like singers who do weird things with their voices - it's one of the areas where metal bands can break out of the fairly rigid formal constraints of the genre and do something really surprising.

i am going to go back and listen to the straight album if i have time over the weekend and give it a fair shot.

and obv given some of the stuff i champion around here i am totally down with singers that do weird stuff w/their voice, but nothing i hear in COF is actually weird, its just kind of cartoon scary, almost like a parody of what i hear when weird/scary works.

Maybe the COF vocals are not weird by the standards of extreme metal, but I think they sound weirder in the context of COF's music, because they're going for something with a bit broader appeal and the vocals contrast with the more commercial elements. There can be something almost embarrassingly intimate about listening to the sound of saliva rattling around in a guy's throat. It's a rather vulnerable and naked way of producing sound - in contrast to the tough guy distancing effect of playing a guitar through loads of pedals and amplifiers. And in conjunction with the overtly sexual lyrics of COF, it makes for a unique effect.

HIM- Anyone want to explain why this is metal and Fall Out Boy is emo pop? Is it because Fall Out Boy have sex with hot girls and HIM like that heart/star symbol thingy? Only two songs in and this is a Lukasz Fabianski (watching him makes you feel like he took up the wrong sport.)

listening to the fates warning right now. can't say I have any serious problems with it but it does seem kind of plodding and clunky. some of the choruses are near fist-pumping territory; this would probably go down smoother w/a couple brewskis.

listening to the cradle of filth record. anyone make a dethlok comparison? this is the dethlok of black metal right here.

anyway, this ain't all that bad either. totally cheesy but lots of metal is, so whatevs. a lot of this strikes me as tedious; esp. the slower numbers like "english fire" (tho the hammerheart backing vox are a nice touch).

like the maiden-ey leads that they sprinkle throughout.

opening of "gabrielle" belongs in an RPG. i'm thinking maybe a chrono trigger outtake? and I see where people are going with the "embarrassingly intimate" coments after that spoken word bit at the tail end of the track.

"gilded c-bomb" is the best track so far. everything on it works to their strengths and it's surprisingly heavy.

also, holy shit, this thing is really long. it's 77 mins total but it's not just the length of the whole album - every track so far has overstayed its welcome. don't think I'm gonna make it through this whole thing...

i'd like to participate in this but missed the first week, and am not really interested in what's going on this week. i like metal a lot but don't really have a solid knowledge of it. this thread is going to do wonders for me, i can see it now.

i did pick up the entombed record though, as it was the only one of the three that i hadn't heard. great stuff!

So after some more listening, I'm not entirely sure what to make of the Fates Warning. It's not doing that much for me beyond the nostalgia I mentioned above. I have no problems with the style but this presents no surprises at all. I feel like I want it to be more of something: either catchier, heavier, or more complex. Scale the Summit, Hammers of Misfortune, or White Willow hit my pomp/prog spots much more than this does. "Eye to Eye" is not bad hard rock pop music though. The singer does sound an awful lot like Steve Perry, whom I actually like.

I like the HIM album better as emo-pop on second listen. It's the kind of thing where I recognize its crassness but don't want to turn it off at the same time. Even my girlfriend was surprised by how poppy this was.

I really dislike it so far (made it through the first 8.5 songs and will not listen to more right now). I can't quite explain why yet. Other than the awful heavy-handed orchestral writing, there's nothing obviously poor about their craftsmanship but something about their aesthetic really does not appeal to me and just leaves me irritated. I could imagine myself loving it, down to the ridiculous narrative, when I was 17-18 though.

Manowar, Sign of the Hammer, 1984Like Amon Amarth, this is their fourth album; but in Manowar's case, this album marked the end, not the beginning, of a sound. On later discs, they'd be just as aggressive, but more pomptastic and less rocking.

Thoughts about this record: not as "power metal" as I expected (much looser and self-consciously epic), very much influenced by Maiden, unsurprisingly I suppose considering the year of release. Presumably the proper power metal stuff came after this record?

I've heard other Amon Amarth and Man O'War records, just not either of those two. Have the GridLink, but haven't really listened to it since I was sent the promo. I remember thinking I had to be in a very particular mood to want to hear it.

Some tips for appreciating Manowar: remember that the lyrics are not the music. The album cover and any band photos you may Google up are not the music. Yes, they're goofy looking. Yes, their lyrics wallow in a kind of machismo that our placid suburban middle-class upbringing and secondary/higher education have taught us is to be ridiculed. But can they write a riff? Hell, yes. Can they play their instruments? They can play the fuck out of their instruments. So shut off the part of your brain that reflexively snickers at things you might be embarrassed to be seen/overheard liking, and fully invest yourself in taking Manowar seriously for 40 minutes or so.

The ManOwaR is not an obvious (thunder)pick, but Thor The Powerhead, Mountains and Guyana are three of their strongest songs, epic stuff. I get goosebumps when the song is introduced in the Hell on Wheels live album.

Also, some fanclub dude counted the times the word "metal" was uttered in each Manowar album. The average was around several dozens, but strangely it's nowhere to be heard in Sign.